‘Doctor Who’ Virtual Reality Experience to Land on VR Headsets Soon

The Entire VR Industry in One Little Email

The Daily Roundup is our comprehensive coverage of the VR industry wrapped up into one daily email, delivered directly to your inbox.

Email Address

The BBC today announced that Doctor Who is getting a VR interactive experience, slated to release on VR headsets sometime this year.

Dubbed Doctor Who: The Runaway, fans will get a chance to step into the TARDIS and join the Thirteenth Doctor (played by Jodie Whittaker) in virtual reality.

According to a press release, the experience is said to last 12 minutes, and will be available on “selected VR headsets in the coming months.” Just which headsets the experience will launch on is still unclear.

The animated VR experience was created by the BBC and Passion Animation Studios, with Whittaker reprising her role as ‘The Doctor’.

“Our team at the BBC VR Hub has been creating new experiences with the goal of helping to usher virtual reality into the mainstream, and Doctor Who is exactly the sort of series that can help more people to try this new technology,” says Zillah Watson, head of BBC VR Hub. “The show has been pushing boundaries for over 55 years, and VR enables Doctor Who to explore a whole new dimension of storytelling.”

Doctor Who: The Runaway is said to include new original music from composer Segun Akinola, the mind behind much of music featured in the show’s eleventh season. The 12-minute experience was written by Victoria Asare-Archer and directed by Mathias Chelebourg, whose previous VR films include Alice, the Virtual Reality Play, and The Real Thing VR.

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. See here for more information.

BBC have put out some great VR content over the past two years, look forward to checking out Doctor Who.

Alexisms

The BBC are currently complaining that if the free licence still applies for those 75 (i think) ana above then they’ll have to start cutting back on programmes. If they weren’t doing super niche (and vr is very niche, in the scale of things barely anyone has a headset) stuff like this then maybe they could just concentrate on what they were formed to do in the first place.

Unlike certain other countries our news has to be proveable with facts. Of course when they employ people to speculate on the events that’s another matter but it’s funny how both left & right claim bias. So the beeb must be doing something right.

Proof XR Lab

“The Turning Forest” (Daydream) has had between 50,000-100,000 downloads. Considering what a small user base Daydream has, its probable BBC have seen good engagement from the public with their VR apps.

As a BBC license payer, i’m happy to see diverse output including VR.

Alexisms

So that’s got to 0.15% of the population at most. Utterly stupid idea.

ale bro

I bet 90% of the downloads are from outside the UK

Alexisms

Good point, even less point doing it. They seem to just want to tick as many boxes as possible without thinking what their majority audience wants.

NikoKun

Cool, I’ll have to check it out.

ale bro

Let’s face it – this will be a Daydream exclusive. Does the BBC do anything else?

Rift, Gear VR, and Daydream have a 13+ age rating, so it’s a bit strange making content for children when the HMD manufacturers don’t recommend it.

superdonkey

the bbc is a hive of far-left champagne socialist who bully the british public with their crap tv license. they cant do anything without saturating it with political correctness and a sickly self righteousness.